


I Want Crazy

by greenmage128



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Karaoke, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up, bordering on songfic territory - sorry guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 12:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2067996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenmage128/pseuds/greenmage128
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley attempts to cut and run, but he has forgotten two things—that his friends are conniving assholes, and that Gabriel is nothing if not persistent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want Crazy

**Author's Note:**

> So here's another thing I've done with [Manda](http://monoxidegirl.tumblr.com) and her Growley playlist being solely to blame for it. I tried my damnedest to stay out of songfic territory, though I'm not sure I succeeded, but the song in question is Hunter Hayes' ["I Want Crazy"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mV3BECsuKw), hence the title. I also may have wanted an excuse to have Crowley, Balthazar, and Bela as snarky, British BFFs, because, well, reasons. And there miiight be two characters from _Final Fantasy VII_ that pop their heads in, but I'll leave that for the reader to decide. Anyway! Enjoy, guys!

Crowley didn’t know why he let Balthazar drag him out to this karaoke bar. It was so not his style, all tacky neon signs and peanut shells on the floor, but if he hadn’t said yes, he never would’ve heard the end of it.

Balthazar and Bela sat at a table off to the side with a perfect view of the stage, dance floor, and bar. Crowley had long ago stopped asking how they always managed to get the best seats in the house. 

“Crowles, you made it,” Balthazar said when he approached, sliding out a chair with his foot. 

Bela watched him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you done sulking?” 

“I was not sulking,” Crowley said, though it was pointless to argue. These two had seen him through his biggest fuck-ups, in their way, including his most recent one. He sat down in the proffered chair and nicked Balthazar’s beer. “So, why are we here?” 

Balthazar smirked, pulling another bottle of beer from nowhere. “To get pissed and laugh our arses off, of course. I know it’s been a few weeks, but you can’t have forgotten how to have fun.” 

The words set something off in Crowley, something he’d been trying to work and drink away for almost a month, and when he sat the bottle down after a long swig, it hit the table with a loud clang. “I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit my definition of ‘fun’.” 

“I think you hit a nerve, darling.” Bela gave Balthazar a smug, if not pleased, look. “Though I have to agree.” 

“Cassie recommended it, so I figured it was worth a look,” Balthazar said with a shrug. 

Crowley focused on the amber glass in his hand and the way the garish light reflected off it and how the resulting color _absolutely didn’t_ remind him of something, someone. “Well if he frequents the place with the bloody Winchesters, then this was a really bad idea.” 

“They do, but not on Tuesdays. I checked.” Balthazar rolled his eyes. “I’m not that stupid.” 

Bela and Crowley exchanged a glance. “Of course,” Bela said after a moment, eyebrows and lips quirked just enough to belie the sincerity in her tone. 

Balthazar sipped his drink. “Wankers.” 

Their conversation was interrupted by someone stepping onto the stage and grabbing the mic, the feedback silencing everyone in the room. It was a woman, a waif of a thing with short, dark hair and wearing a tight green top and khaki shorts. 

“Evening, everyone! Are you guys ready for some karaoke?” she asked, far more exuberant than her size would indicate. 

A few yells of encouragement went up, and dear God, Crowley wasn’t drunk enough for this. 

“Then let the extravaganza begin! Y’all know what to do!” She jumped off the stage, handing the mic to someone sitting at a front row table, obscured by the shadows of the stage lights. 

“I’m going to get something stronger,” Crowley said, standing up. 

Balthazar stuffed some bills into his hand. “Bring back some for us.” 

Crowley nodded and made his way over to the bar, which was being tended by another pretty girl with dark hair, though this one’s was longer, and she wasn’t quite as… chipper. 

“Two rounds of your best,” he said with a nod back to his table, setting Balthazar’s money and a bit of his own on the counter. 

The bartender raised an eyebrow, as she grabbed up a tray and six glasses. “You’re not even going to specify what kind of alcohol?” 

“Normally, yes, but I’m willing to settle for whatever gets me through this night,” Crowley said, running a hand through his hair. 

She nodded, smiling, grabbed a bottle of (admittedly) good vodka, and began filling the tumblers. “Rough week?” 

The sound of liquid hitting glass made his mouth water, and Crowley wasn’t even that thirsty. “Something like that.” 

Just as she finished pouring the vodka, music started crackling out of the speakers next to the stage, a guitar carrying an extra-folksy twang. 

“Here we go,” the bartender said, leaning against the bar. 

Crowley should have taken that as his cue to high-tail it back to his table, but the voice that started singing caught his attention and planted his feet to the floor despite all his reservations. 

A saccharine, rough around the edges tenor that he’d only heard before as a whispered lullaby, always right before he drifted off so he wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Crowley downed the contents of one of the tumblers, ignoring the revulsion that rippled through him, because even his distaste for vodka couldn’t overwhelm his instinct to flee that, damn it, angelic voice. 

Now it was singing about not wanting good or good enough and wanting crazy, senseless love, and the words forced Crowley to look at the stage, at the asshole who had the audacity to pull at what was left of his heartstrings. 

And there he was, wearing that awful olive green army jacket as always, sandy brown hair slicked back, though still out of place because it would kill him to be orderly about anything, and amber eyes glinting in the neon lights and focused on him. 

Crowley shot a look at Balthazar, who was now reclining in his chair, one arm wrapped around Bela’s shoulders. Both blondes grinned back at him, not even a trace of feigned innocent surprise on their faces. 

He would get revenge for this, he would, but for the moment all he could focus on was the man on stage. 

The fact that the words were borrowed didn’t diminish the sincerity in his voice, the almost unbearable emotion in his eyes. Every nerve in Crowley’s body screamed at him to run, to get the hell out of there, but the weight of it all—that voice, those eyes, the damned song—kept him rooted in place, like he’d die if he dared to entertain the thought. 

It was the final verse that did him in, that broke him. The bar was quiet in an almost reverent sort of way, everyone riveted to the man on stage the way Crowley had been for years. The words washed over him, left him breathless despite the upbeat music and the drunken cheering elicited by a held note. 

_Yeah, look at us baby, tonight the midnight rules are breaking. There’s no such thing as wild enough, and maybe we just think too much. Who needs to play it safe in love? Let’s be crazy!_

As the song closed, the spell over Crowley broke, and before he realized what he was doing he was turning and heading for the door, ignoring the multiple calls of his name, including one by that voice that he wished would just shut the fuck up. 

Outside he could breathe again, away from the noise and the smoke and the clutter and, most importantly, him. 

“Crowley!”

Or not. Crowley didn’t turn, instead focusing on working the muggy spring air in and out of my lungs. He was not ready for this. 

“Crowley, wait.” There was a hand on his arm, and he was spun round to face the very thing he was trying to get away from.

Being this close, those amber eyes pleading with him, was too much, too fast. For a moment Crowley forgot how to breathe, and he scrambled for a reply that wasn’t him falling into the man’s arms. “You’re not going to sing at me again, are you?”

Gabriel didn’t comment on the weakness in his voice, how every word trembled, fraught with emotion that Crowley fought hard to shove down otherwise. “No,” he said, chuckling a little, the bastard. “Sorry about the ambush, by the way.”

Crowley couldn’t help but stare at him, not even bothering to verbally call bullshit on that one. 

“Okay, only a little sorry.” A sheepish grin crossed Gabriel’s face before returning to that intense stare that had Crowley squirming. “I just didn’t know how else to get your attention. You won’t pick up the phone, and your assistant keeps misdirecting my calls no matter what crazy accent I use.”

“Remind me to give Cecily a raise, because I know I don’t pay her enough to put up with all that.” Crowley found himself smiling despite the way his chest tightened at Gabriel’s statement. The cell phone calls he knew about, but the office calls were news to him. She really did deserve that raise. “Why were you even trying that hard to talk to me? We broke up, as I recall.”

“That’s funny, because I don’t remember you ever using those specific words.” Gabriel crossed his arms, taking a small step back. “No, you picked a bullshit fight and packed a bag. For a week I thought you were joking, that would come back all ‘I told you so’, but.”

There was no sense in arguing the truth, but hearing it out loud did sting. It was a douche move, but Crowley hadn’t been able to think of a better way out and still survive the parting. He wasn’t even sure he could get through this. Crowley swallowed hard. “You had to know it was coming, Gabriel. We did nothing but fight for months.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows knitted together, and his mouth dropped open, and he almost looked offended. “We bickered! If you didn’t notice, that’s kind of what we do. Hell, we’re doing it now! I didn’t think that was grounds for breaking up.”

“It is when it’s all we do. It’s exhausting, not to mention unhealthy,” Crowley said, trying to keep calm. Already he could feel that old pattern setting in, the familiar back and forth that in all honesty he missed. Still, it was the only legitimate bit of ammo he had.

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re glowing portraits of healthy human beings.” Gabriel rolled his eyes and shook his head, dropping his arms to his sides. “Look, I don’t care about any of that. That song back there? I meant every word. Even if it’s what some people might call bat-shit insane, it’s what I want, all right? You. This. Us.”

“Why?” The word flew out of Crowley’s mouth before he could stop it, had to bite down on the curse that almost followed.

“You… Seriously? You have to ask? Granted we both suck at the whole talking about our feelings thing, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” Gabriel shook his head, and then sucked in a breath and looked Crowley in the eyes. “I love you. What other reason do I need?”

Anything Crowley planned to say, to push Gabriel far enough away that he couldn’t close the distance again, went up in smoke. Just a glance into those amber eyes was enough to tell him that Gabriel meant it, that for some inexplicable reason he did, in fact, love Crowley. This time he couldn’t stop himself from cursing. “Fuck.”

Gabriel quirked an eyebrow. “That’s all you have to say?”

His brain to mouth filter snapped, and everything came tumbling out in a rush of words and emotions that Crowley just knew he was going to regret later. “You are not making this easy. Here I thought if I could just beat you to the punch and tell you to bugger off before you made some ridiculous argument that somehow made sense, that you actually would and maybe then you would stop—”

Crowley managed to rein himself in then, biting off the next word and swallowing it down, before he said something he would really regret. Of course, Gabriel had to throw a monkey wrench into that plan too, and somehow in an instant he was close to Crowley, amber flashing gold and a hesitant hand covering his. “Stop what?”

He should have pulled away, should have kept his mouth shut, but Gabriel had a way of getting in the way of his better judgment, of breaking down his will and all his carefully laid plans. It was infuriating and endearing and, above all, a damn nuisance. Crowley sighed in resignation, even laughed a little, unsure of why he thought this would go any different. “That you would stop driving me crazy, you prat.”

“Never,” Gabriel said, resting his forehead against Crowley’s and threading their fingers together. “To be fair, there are times I want to throw you into a wall too.”

“‘Want to’?”

“You know what I mean.”

Leaning into the embrace, Crowley wrapped an arm around Gabriel’s waist, like a moth to flame, and they were bound to get burnt. “And you know how this will end.”

Gabriel smiled. “Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Does it matter? We’re more miserable apart than we are together apparently, so hey, that’s something.”

“Existing in a perpetual state of simultaneous irritation and arousal is not what I’d call miserable, darling, but fine. Have it your way,” Crowley said, unable to keep himself from smiling too.

“Well whatever the difference was, it was enough to make Balthazar call me to bitch about it. So you’ve only got yourself to blame for the karaoke.” Gabriel laughed and squeezed his hand. “Do we have a deal, then? No more intentionally trying to fuck this up?”

Crowley gave little thought to his reply, because Gabriel already knew what his answer was going to be, and it was self-sabotage either way, so there was little harm in taking the fun option. “Whatever this is.”

“Precisely,” Gabriel said. He tilted his head and pressed their lips together, a kiss Crowley reciprocated with an undignified whimper.

When they parted, Crowley caught from the corner of his eye Bela and Balthazar watching them through one of the bar’s dirty, is-that-fog-or-a-human-grease-stain windows. Balthazar was grinning as Bela handed him a wad of bills. Anyone else might’ve been angry to find their best friends betting on their romantic future, but as Crowley had made a few bucks on Balthazar’s blundering behalf himself, he had no room to complain.

Gabriel must’ve noticed too, because he grinned and gave them both a thumbs-up before starting to drag Crowley back inside. “Come on, let’s get shit-faced and laugh at other drunk people.”

That should not have sounded appealing, and it definitely should not have made Crowley grin too. “Just no more singing.”

“No promises!” Gabriel called over his shoulder.

Snatches of melody filtered through Crowley’s mind. _It ain’t right if you ain’t lost your mind._ That sounded about right.


End file.
